Rail roads and their tracks.

ArlyA · Saturday at 7:19 AM

My first rail and sail combo at the new C. Reiss dock in Superior as BNSF job 214 lifts sugar stone off the dock as the Algoma Innovator unloads salt at nearby Envirotech-Hallett Dock 8. The berm on the left is dredge spoils from the slip that have been contain on the property. April 21, 2025 Duluth MN.

Jstpssng · Saturday at 5:56 PM

While cleaning out my parent's house, my sister found this old clipping from about 25 years ago.Sunspots is or was a place for people to write in will various questions.)
It seemed appropriate for this thread.

On a similar note, adventure writer Clive Cussler had an organisation which located shipwrecks and other interesting historical artifacts. (Among other things, they are the group which found the Hunley)
They went out west to find a locomotive which had been lost in a similar fashion. Although unsuccessful, they determined that after getting paid by the insurance company the RR raised their lost engine, changed the numbers and ran it.

In the case of the train in my article, with today's technology it would be interesting to at least find out how far down it is and where it lays.

bcp · 2025-05-04T00:52:55-0400

The Androscoggin and Kennebec railroad (5'6" gauge) was completed through Greene, Maine, in 1849.

Maine Central Railroad main line - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Couldn't find any mention of a lost train in the LOC collection, or in a Google search, except a reference to that newspaper article.

Chronicling America « Library of Congress

Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1756-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.

chroniclingamerica.loc.gov

Doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Bruce

PS: in the book:
Sesquicentennial History of the Town of Greene, Androscoggin County, Maine, 1775 to 1900
With Some Matter Extending to a Later Date
1991

From:

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b4839266&seq=67

Jstpssng · 2025-05-04T08:46:52-0400

bcp said:
The Androscoggin and Kennebec railroad (5'6" gauge) was completed through Greene, Maine, in 1849.

Maine Central Railroad main line - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Couldn't find any mention of a lost train in the LOC collection, or in a Google search, except a reference to that newspaper article.

Chronicling America « Library of Congress

Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1756-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.

chroniclingamerica.loc.gov

Doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Bruce

PS: in the book:
Sesquicentennial History of the Town of Greene, Androscoggin County, Maine, 1775 to 1900
With Some Matter Extending to a Later Date
1991

From:

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b4839266&seq=67

View attachment 3419035

I am impressed. I would never been able to glean the information which you have dug up.

bcp · 2025-05-04T11:21:00-0400

Another bit.

When I get an interesting problem, I simply keep chasing the answer from all directions.

Bruce

MossRoad · 2025-05-04T15:00:38-0400

bcp said:
Another bit.

View attachment 3419084

When I get an interesting problem, I simply keep chasing the answer from all directions.

Bruce

Voluntary entrance into the rabbit hole.

Very interesting stuff.

My father in-law and I used to walk south down an abandoned rail line, then take a spur line off to the east to get to a lake to go ice fishing. The area was very swampy. The spur line grade turned into double stacked ties, then triple stacked like cribbing, then 4, 5 and 6 high and finally a trestle bridge that ended about 40-50 feet in the lake.

A bit of poking into the history of the area found that the lake had a peat mine on one side and that's how they transported it out.

Wish I'd have had cell phone camera back then. It's all gone now.

You can still see the abandoned main line and I've marked with blue the approximate location of that spur line.

That main line belonged to the NJI&I railroad. That was originally formed by the Singer Sewing Machine Co. They had a huge factory here in South Bend, and the line ran south to connect to the Wabash RR.

Here's an interesting link with a description of the NJI&I with pictures of their roundhouse that was just torn down a couple of years ago, a diesel engine, one of the 3-4 Singer buildings that is still standing but about to collapse (my father in law worked in there and got disentery from the drinking water). Their main admin building still stands across the street from the old Singer plant. It's just a mid-sized single story house-like structure.